**5. Conclusion and recommendations**

Despite the over 60 years of biogas promotion in Tanzania the technology has not well developed in Rungwe district to date. This study revealed a number of issues that led to the stagnation of the technology. One, energy policy framework has put low profile of biogas in the rural energy development strategies. The technology has been dumped in the cluster of renewable energy which basically concentrates on major types of energy such as biomass (liquid biofuel and fuelwood). Today, there is a lack of adequate indigenous capacity to design, manufacture, market and distribute as well as install and maintain biogas technologies. Two, the cost of installing biogas facility of USD 550-675 is high for many of the rural poor to afford. Three, there is a tendency of risk averse among the poor to adopt new technologies including biogas. Demonstrating the technology and its related benefits might change the pace of adoption. Four, there is also an issue related to water availability. Where water is far from home creates another burden especially for women who at the end of the day they have to choose between running the biogas facilities or producing food for the family, definitely the latter will prevail. Five, the poor performance of milk marketing is linked with poor government policies, low level of management, inadequate milk markets and difficulties arising from the predominance of direct marketing (Kisusu et al., 2000. Other constraints facing dairy producers include lack of improved technology at farm level and weak institutional support (Somda et al., 2004) small size of farms and their distance from markets, animal health and reproductive problems and lack of good-quality animal feeds in sufficient quantities (Swai and Kurimuribo, 2011). Smallholder dairy producers often face problems of high transaction costs when it comes to the question of marketing their small quantities of milk to distant markets.

The recommendations are that the government should accommodate and institutionalize the planning of biogas technology dissemination energy in rural areas. Sensitisation should be enhanced, and support services should be provided towards optimisation of the biogas production process so that potential benefits are realized (Langeni, 2010). In this regard, addressing technical as well as non-technical factors is essential for the sustainability of biogas development and for decision making processes in the energy sector. The government should facilitate access to credit through providing information and also guarantee farmers to get credits. The government should help the farmers access milk markets through providing marketing information and selling of processed products. Modalities of the arrangements should be to link farmers to markets need to take into account socio-economic and agro-climatic diversities (Chakrabarti and Mukhopadhyay, 2009). There should be educational and awareness campaigns on biogas benefits and successes, the provision of financial and non-financial incentives to households could bolster wider biogas energy acceptance in developing countries (Walekhwa, 2009). Lastly, the government in collaboration with stakeholders should provide water near homes as strategy to facilitate biogas adoption.
